Users of the World Wide Web (WWW) access the document stock of the internet via web browsers. Both the connection set-up to a certain server and the transmission of the web page can take up some time. This is the case above all if the user wishes to download selected documents onto his system. The user does not receive any information whatsoever regarding the waiting time to be expected when accessing a certain document; important information, to be precise, the connection and transmission speed, is not displayed.
This lack of information hampers productivity if users are seeking information on the internet or want to load fairly large packets of information from the internet and several selection options exit. When searching, the user often finds himself in the situation of a wealth of possible search successes. However few of those documents are really relevant and do not just touch on the subject area. The user is slowed down in this process by web servers which are all too slow and often do not hold the desired information. A similar problem arises when requesting fairly large information packets. The user only recognizes which hyperlinks (links in documents of the WWW) are fast, i.e. have a high transmission speed, and which do not, after a fairly long period. In the case of slow connections, these are often aborted if possible and a new attempt made on a different web server. Some web servers try to help users with this problem by means of additional information on their web pages. FIG. 1 shows the download page of shareware.com. On this page, an icon is placed ahead of each hyperlink which is intended to indicate how reliable the corresponding web server is. However, this information is at best a guide, is scarcely attended to and does not go into one important variable in dealing with the WWW, to be precise, the duration of the transmission. The duration of the transmission depends on the network topology and the link of the client system to the network. Fluctuations in the traffic volume in the network also result in completely different transmission times.
An object of the present is, therefore, to provide a system and method which provides the user, prior to the loading of referenced documents, with transmission information for the loading of these documents. This method is simple in construction and mode of operation and is capable of implementation without significant modification of the existing hardware and software.
The present invention represents a solution to the problem of performance quality information not being available in the application environment of WWW applications, such as web browsers. It is based on the technical feasibility of expanding HTML documents belatedly to include performance information. The information expansion can be effected in a proxy, which adds a loading speed or time to be expected to the documents to be passed on. However, functionality of this kind does not have to remain limited to this form of realization. Any addition of performance information (e.g. web browser) to an HTML document fulfils the fundamental idea of the present invention.